Days after Apple made available the iPhone 5S and 5C in store shelves in the U.S. and UK, the Cupertino-based company claimed it broke records and sold 9 million units over the weekend. There were doubts over the figure because it did not contain breakdown between the two phone models, while some believe it refers to shipment of the smartphones from Apple to the retail outlets and not from retailers to buyers.

On Friday, Computerworld IT blogger Richi Jennings wrote that reports came from China that the iPhone 5C is not selling well. He added that because of this development, production reportedly is being slashed by half, while the price of the unlocked device in the gray-market has plummeted to $425.

The blog cited several negative comments about its price. It quoted Bryan Wolfe who described the iPhone 5C as a huge disappointment and that the Chinese gray market was not impressed, causing its price to go down 30 per cent below suggested retail price. He added the 5C is not a bad device, what is wrong is its pricing, the cheap cover and its controversial set of colours that makes the model a tough sell.

On the other hand, Anthony Cai wrote that Apple insiders said on Thursday that dismal sales caused average daily production of the 5C to be cut to 150,000 from 300,000.

Chris Burt said that the iPhone 5C is an ugly phone and took issue that Apple placed the last-gen hardware in it.

Mr Jenning's blog came out on the same day that a reliable Apple analyst, Ming-Chi Kuo, estimated that Apples shipment of 11.4 million 5C models in the September quarter was 33 per cent lower than the original projection.

As a result of the weak sales, he placed estimates of the December quarter sales to 10.4 million units, which is a 10 per cent cut from previous estimate.

The Cupertino-based tech giant is scheduled to release the sales figure for the iPhone for its fourth fiscal quarter of 2013 at a conference call on Oct 28, Monday. But it is not expected to provide a breakdown of sales between the 5S and 5C, further fueling speculations that the latter's sales are weaker than expected.